Cooking Italian Recipes is a blog style website devoted to preserving the old family recipes of my Sicilian heritage. Cooking authentic Italian food is easy, fun and delicious! Some of these Italian dishes are new takes on old traditional family gourmet recipes. Here, we will also get into home wine making, review products and comment on wine - food pairings. Enjoy.

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Friday, November 15, 2013

It is very easy to make Home Made Chicken Soup.The past few years, we have been very into making soups. Often times, you will find rotisserie chickens stores for very inexpensive. BJs, Costco and others have these Chickens for $4.99 US. You couldn't buy a chicken and make it yourself for that price. So, I usually buy a couple of chickens already cooked and...

Have a Chicken Meal

Have left over Chicken for other meals

And make Homemade Chicken Soup...

It is easy to do, and I will show you how! My video on how to make chicken soup is here:

Debone the Chickens. Put all of the bones and any skin you don't want into a pot.

Cover the bones in the pot with water, cover the pot with a lid and simmer for about two hours.Chop up the veggies and herbs, and set them aside.Cube some of the chicken for the soup. Make the pieces the size you would like your soup. You can see how I cut up mine my video, as well as how the veggies are cut up.After the chicken soup has been simmering for a few hours, I transferred the chicken broth out by pouring into another container and straining out the bones and other parts with a colander .Next, I let the broth sit a little while and let the fat rise to the top. Using a ladle, I remove the fat. You can see this in the video, too. If I am making turkey soup, I let this sit over night in the refrigerator (after cooling of course) and the fat rises to the top.

After removing the fat, I discard the bones, return the broth to the pot.

Then, I add the veggies and chicken and simmer for about an hour. I may add some water, depending on how intense the flavor is of the broth.

Finally, I serve the soup, usually with some nice Italian bread and butter.

It takes a little time to make, but it sure is worth it. I believe this to be far superior to any soup you can buy in the store. If caning, I reserve the carrots for the jars. They will cook in the jars, while pressure canning for an hour and a half... They may get too mushy if you cook them in the soup for an hour and then pressure can them for an hour and a half... Please refer to a good book on caning, so that you follow safe preserving practices.I hope you enjoy this recipe and method on how to make your own homemade chicken soup, made without MSG. That is something you can feel really good about, being able to serve your family soup you made yourself in a wholesome way that has no MSG.

Hello, Sicilian Prince here - I just needed to share this homemade cranberry sauce recipe, as it is one of the greatest I have ever tasted. A few years ago, my wife and I were watching Ozzy Osbourne's reality show, and he had a Holiday special. I don't remember who, but someone was making fresh cranberry sauce from scratch, and it looked really easy to do. We love cranberry sauce, so we said that we just had to try to do that someday.Fast forward a year or two, we are shopping in Whole Foods and see fresh organic cranberries on sale, and we looked at each other and said now we don't have an excuse not to try it. But, we needed a recipe... Where to get one... So, we looked and looked.. Now, commercial cranberry sauce, most of them anyway, has high fructose corn syrup... Something we actively try to ignore. We decided to make ours with Organic Sugar. In asking round, we came across a recipe from someone's German Grandmother. It looked good and sort of a starting place. It also looked similar to what we saw on that Ozzy show. But, we wanted this to be spectacular...Shopping at Trader Joes, we found these:

Trader Joe's Orange Cranberries

Immediately, we knew that these would be awesome in the recipe. So, we tried it. Wow! Totally blown away. If you can get your hands on these, get them.

Technically, this easy cranberry sauce recipe is a cranberry relish, or cranberry conserve. I really don't care about the technicalities. What matters to me is this is one of our healthy easy recipes. The ingredients are so good and wholesome. Look up the health benefits of cranberries, you will see what I am talking about.

This Cranberry Orange Relish is one of the best recipes I have... If you don't try any other recipe, do try this one... Here is my YouTube video for this Cranberry Sauce Recipe ( Note, I am more than quadrupling it... It is THAT GOOD!)

Ingredients

4 Cups Cranberries

1 tbsp Orange Zest

2 Oranges, peeled, pitted and quartered.

1 Cup Dried Orange Cranberries (Trader Joes) or Rasins

1 1/4 Cup Water

1 Cup Pecans

2 1/2 Cup Sugar

Directions

In a pot put in everything but the sugar and pecans. Stir occasionally while simmering on medium low heat ( Probably 15 to 20 minutes.) Do this until the cranberries are soft that the pot is bubbling.After the cranberries are soft, the pecans and stir them in well.Next, add all of the sugar at one time! Stir it in well and let the whole mixture melt, bubble and thicken. About 10 or 15 minutes more. Taste it and see if you want to add a little more sugar. Depends on the tartness of the cranberries you are using.If you are canning, do your canning now. If not, transfer to a container and allow to cool before serving. I like cranberry sauce cold, so I would refrigerate it before serving.That was easy, wasn't it. Now, I am not responsible for your addiction to this easy cranberry sauce or tears when there is no more left. Although this is not an Italian recipe, I feel it is too good not to share with you. As you can see in my video, I ended up with 25 Jelly Jars and 2 Pint jars....That is a lot of cranberry sauce! I truly hope you try out this cranberry relish recipe.

From my family to yours, I wish you a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. - Sicilian Prince

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Welcome

Hello All,

Welcome to Cooking-Italian-Recipes.com! This blog is dedicated to the Italian cooking that I grew up on, Italian wine making and family traditions.

As a child, growing up a Sicilian, in New York, the aromas of this fine cooking permeating my home were an everyday occurrence. Getting to eat this fine Italian Cooking, from Grandma, I quickly became spoiled.

Here, I will share my modern day experiences, re-creating in the present from the memories of the past.

I think what makes this website different from others like it, is that I am just a regular guy. I am not a chef, nor do I do I cook for a living. You will not find me on Food Network! Not that I think there is anything wrong with Food Network... The point being is I am not some famous chef on TV. Just a regular every day Sicilian guy with no formal chef training.

So, if I can cook these Italian recipes, so can you! No special skills or training is required. All of the Italian recipes I present here are simple.

When I cook, most of the time, I believe less is more. I don't like to over complicate dishes. Flavors, in my opinion, should not compete with one another, but should support and enhance each other. Gourmet doesn't have to be complicated. It should be defined with that it tastes good.

Please feel free to give my Italian Recipes a try... Modify them as you wish.

And, if you enjoy them, please pass them down to your children and grandchildren! Build family traditions and memories around these Italian dishes.

As my grandmother used to say, Italian food is about love. To the memory of my Grandmother, I dedicate this site.